“Should we promote Bob?”
“Hell no, he’s the only one here who does any work! We need him right where he is!”
This is not satire.
It’s called being pigeon holed and that shit is real depending on your company. Some hard workers get promoted some just get more work.
Indeed it is not.
I once worked at the new office of a company that just opened in the state, one of the first who was doing the job while the construction workers were still terminating wires and tacking up drywall. When a new supervisory position was created, all of my coworkers assumed I’d be the first one picked but I was told my experience and wisdom would be better served on the job and teaching new hires the ropes.
Didn’t take long before I stopped giving a shit about promotions and left for a different company soon after. Telling someone their hard work has been rewarded with more work and not more money for rent is a good way to drain the motivation right out of people you manage.
Fuck you. Pay me.
Hahahaha talk about corporate propaganda. I feel sorry for the poor schlub that reads this and is like “yeah, I’m gonna do that”.
I’ve learned to be the one to turn the lights off. It pisses the boss off but ensures everyone knows the shift is over
I turn the lights on in the morning and make coffee. Because I’m the only one that knows how to make coffee that doesn’t taste like dirty water. Has nothing to do with work ethic and everything to do with coffee.
I turn the lights on in the morning because “lmao I’m off at 3 to beat the traffic, suckers”.
Thank thee for thy works, thou serv’st our Dark Lord well.
Shit when im the first one in, i leave the lights off. Then i get mad at the person who eventually turns them on. If i have to be in that early, i dont also want to be miserable from the bright lights
“Why are you sitting here in the dark?”
Uhh, my computer is lit up and I can hear the damn fluorescent lights when I’m sitting there alone, piss off and let me drink my coffee in peace.
I knew a guy who kept his office dark except for a little desk lamp. He said he preferred cold and darkness. One time when we all walked to a group lunch in below freezing weather, I was shivering in my down jacket and he had shorts and an aloha shirt. Freaking reptile!
was it a UV desk light?
I managed an auto parts warehouse with a small fleet of delivery drivers, I was the one with the code to the alarm and they keys to everything. Sometimes if I had trouble sleeping or was a bit hungover from imbibing too much I’d sleep in and roll up to the shop around 9-10 instead of 7. Not a single one of my employees ever had an issue with starting the day later and I didn’t care about them leaving early to pick up kids or whatever. Long as you show up and shit gets done I’m putting the same hours on all your paychecks anyways
We work a lot of hard, long hours in my field. Occasionally I get a fuck off easy job but that’s only when business is slow. I’m the lead tech on every job. I also have a bad problem waking up in the morning. Despite being fully sober and getting at least 7 hours of sleep, I sleep through my alarms which are incredibly loud and annoying, and they’re set 5 minutes apart for two hours. Guys who know me know that they can go in, do their work, and if I’m late I let them go early by the amount of time I am late. I’m often finishing the job by myself at night.
That’s ok though. That’s the way the world should work. I’m not a morning person. Waking up is literally the worst thing that happens to me every day barring tragedies or serious injuries. It’s so much worse in the winter too.
I would rather sustain the injuries than to wake up half the time, regardless of how much or little sleep I’ve gotten. I feel your pain. Genetic night watchmen unite! Whichever morning person decided the world should exist 9-5 should be dragged into the street and shot.
It wants you to be a janitor?
Work ethic never went out of fashion. Many, many people work very hard everyday. Always have. Work is a part of life, always has been, always will be. It’s the incentives that are the problem. Paying people just enough (or not enough, in many cases) to just keep their heads above water, for taking on more and more work, so that owners, investors, and executives can make ever increasing profits, just doesn’t motivate people to work very hard. Much of the hard work in the current system is motivated by fear. That is not positive or sustainable.
Hard work feels great when it benefits you, your community, folks you care about, or even just real people.
It feels fucking awful to work hard when the only people who will benefit are some rich assholes who exploit you.
a great round up of the difference between work versus toil.
Super well said!
First, don’t get stuck in the mindset that hard work is only worthwhile when making money. You can work on things that directly enhance your life and those of the people around you and skip the medium of exchange entirely.
Then, upgrade to the understanding that hard work to only benefit others can be the most rewarding yet.
Nice and succinct and 💯
It probably won’t make you feel any better, but if you work for a corporation the profits don’t just go to rich assholes. People’s pension plans and retirement funds buy and sell stocks, and so do mutual funds anybody with money can buy. You don’t have to be rich to own stock, just not poor.
I agree with you, but this is an “anti work” community, and there’s a substantial part of the movement that is techno-utopian and is actively arguing for the dissolution of work in general.
I understand, but until the technology necessary for a transcendentalist, post-scarcity, post-work society is developed (assuming said technology is even possible), work will remain absolutely necessary.
Gosh, I hate to disagree with you, but it seems like multi-generation inheritance might affect the necessity of work for some. Currently.
I’m fairly tech-utopian myself, but it’s is more of an aspirational goal that won’t help anybody for the foreseeable future. Automation will become capable of performing all human labor, but having it actually do that will take a lot longer because it will require reshaping our whole society. It will essentially mean the end of money, and therefore the end of some people being hugely wealthy compared to everybody else, which those people won’t want to let go of.
If I saw one of my employees being the first one in the office turning on the lights as well as the last one turning them off, I’d see that as a problem.
I’d talk to that worker and first ask why they were doing this as I’d be concerned that they may be having trouble at home (and were using work as an escape). I’d want to find out if there was anything they needed to help their home situation. When you manage people, their home problems become your problems. The corollary to this is that a solution for a personal home problem can become a solution to a workplace problem. I had one worker that had difficulty at work because they didn’t have working laundry facilities which affected them wearing presentable clothing at work. I bought them a new laundry appliance for $500 and had it delivered. After that they were always dressed presentably at work. This was a very good worker otherwise, and this fixed the work problem as well as helped them at home in their personal life.
If they communicated they believed the “first in, last out” was their understanding of the work expectation, I’d correct them on that immediately. One of my favorite phrases to use at work are “There are days I might have to ask you to stay later. This is not that day. There’s nothing urgent that can’t wait for tomorrow. Go home early.” (these are salary folks, so they’re not losing money by leaving early).
If they communicated they were overworked, I’d work with them on the tasks to make sure they were only getting assigned a reasonable workload. This may mean hiring another worker, or eliminating tasks that don’t produce a meaningful result to the company to make sure the workload would be reasonable.
Requiring your workers to be “butts in seats” (mine are WFH anyway) simply to be tick a box is the fastest way to lose your best people as it is disrespectful of their skills and their effort. Further, well rested workers (mentally and physically) perform far better than exhausted and stressed ones.
Sorry but this 9 hour comment could have been a paragraph. Your one of those bosses who believes their words are more important than everyone else’s arent ya
This is a manager ethic that probably gets you too much loyalty and effective people. Bleugh. Who needs that? ;-)
If you pride yourself on being a hard worker just know that everyone else is in a group chat without you.
If I turned the office lights off at the end of my workday, it’ll just annoy the people who are still working. 🤷🏻♂️
That’s why I do it. They should be working smarter, not longer anyway.
End of year performance review.
“We think your performance this year has been ok. Not great, not bad, just ok. We can’t justify a bonus for you this year with senior management.”
“But I am always the last one out every night and have been nearly all year.”
“Really, I wouldn’t know. I never stick around that late. Now that reminds me, there were those two days last month where you were seen leaving early. We don’t appreciate that lack of work ethic at this company.”
“It was because I had stayed back late the previous days!”
Absolute truth! Your boss will forget the dozen days you stayed after hours, the first time you come in late.
Happened to me, didn’t matter to him that 75% of the time I worked through my lunch, didnt matter that 3-4 times per month I either came in early or stayed late to finish up a task.
One day, I came in 20 minutes late, got called in later that week by my manager to, “talk about my tardiness issue.”
*writing on notepad*
struggles… with… time… management.
They were never going to justify a bonus anyway. They just want you to feel like it’s your fault.
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I’ve had a version of this scenario happen twice. The last time, when I literally closed double the tickets of the next person down, I was only just doing what was expected of me.
Company Objective: Pay minimum, Gain maximum work
My Objective: Gain maximum pay, work minimum
You know how a country has their country prioritized? (eg: “America First”) Well I have a similar idea: “Me First”. Fuck the company. They are maximizing their profits, I’m gonna maximize my profits.
Gus Catlson: US based company consultant who writes for right based Canadian newspaper Globe & Mail. Also was a director at that newspaper. Was in charge of communications for the Thompson Reuters merger. Has a Pulitzer from 1992, but beyond that its all business reporting and opinion pieces.
Everything in his background tells me he hasn’t had to work insane hours in decades. He hasn’t had a boss ask him to work 10 - 20 extra hours just to have a 2% increase at the end of the year. He was in charge of a Canadian major newspaper, which aren’t known for paying a proper wage. So he knows he’s lying, he’s just annoyed people want to have lives.
He has dozens of these ass licking headlines.
